


A Penny Saved

by numinousnumbat



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/M, Welters Challenge 2018, canon levels of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-29 05:31:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14466075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/numinousnumbat/pseuds/numinousnumbat
Summary: Penny meets himself, who makes him one hell of an offer. For the 2018 Welters Challenge, Theme 2: “Unity.”





	A Penny Saved

**Author's Note:**

> [The Welters Challenge tumblr.](https://thewelterschallenge.tumblr.com/)

This book was water damaged and was that viscera on edges of the pages? Gross, man. Did no one think to use a protection spell on priceless ancient tomes? Now he was going to have to write up a fine and, ugh, paperwork.

“Hello?” a voice said. Penny looked up from his cart of books and saw … himself. A spell of some sort? Or a golem? Hallucination? Any of those things seemed as likely as the other.

“Hi,” Penny said, guarded. “Who are you?”

“I’m you, from the 23rd timeline,” the man said. "I've been going by Penny 23."

“Ok,” Penny said slowly. “How did you get here?”

“Well, how I ended up in your timeline is that I followed Josh and Julia here through the Tesla Flexion. How I ended up in The Library today is dragon, boat, summoning spell, and a favor,” the man said, listing them off on his fingers. “Oh, and a $37 Uber this morning.”

“Surge pricing?”

“Yeah, fuck surge pricing,” the man said. “I'm glad travelers don't have to rely on that.”

“I'm double lucky, no body,” Penny said with a smile. “Nice to meet you, I guess.”

“Yeah, same,” the man said. He was looking around, not that there was much to see. A seemingly endless number of aisles, dull lighting with a hum that was always annoying. Sometimes there were other librarians, hunting for a book that had been misshelved and whatnot, but he spent most of his time alone. If proved himself a responsible employee, in a few thousand years he might get some more duties.

“I came to make you an offer,” the man said.

“What kind of an offer?” Penny asked. He didn’t trust offers, and he definitely didn’t trust offers made from some other version of himself.

“A lend you my body, say about 50 percent of the time, offer.”

“Why would you do that?” Penny knew when an offer was too good to be true.

“Well, technically William Adiyodi is dead, so it’s not like I can get my career started in this timeline.” He looked straight at Penny. “And, honestly, I’m already on borrowed time, I would already be dead in my timeline.” The man shrugged. “If our situations were reversed, I’d like to think you’d do the same for me.”

“For how long? You realize I have a -”

“Billion year contract, yeah, Kady filled me.”

“You met Kady?”

“I did. She … cares about you.” The other Penny looked amused.

“I’m sure you could probably convince her that Penny with a body was a good replacement for Penny without a body,” Penny said. Kady, he missed Kady so much.

“Funny story,” the man said. “I'm in love with Julia.”

Ok, that was a surprise. Maybe. He did like his women smart as hell and feisty as hell. “So, why aren’t you with Julia right now? Why are you here making me an offer in the Library?”

“My Julia is dead and I miss her; we were soulmates. Me and this Julia, we’re not soulmates.”

“So this is some sort of grand romantic gesture.” Penny laughed. Well, that helped explain things.

“Any world with Julia - even if she’s not my Julia - is better than a world without her,” the man said.

“I get it,” Penny said, thinking of Kady. “So say I agree to this, how does it work? It’s not easy to get back and forth from The Library. And what if I wanted to run off with your body and never come back?”

The man shrugged. “Then I live a billion years in The Library, it still beats whatever I had coming in my timeline. As far as traveling, Julia and Kady talked to Mayakovsky, there’s a spell that can link us in the astral plane and then we make the switch when we decide." He was pacing and he ran his fingers down the spines of books on a shelf. "For the record, no one knows what the long term consequences to any of this are. We might merge and become one person, we might start to reject the linking spell, no one knows.”

“I signed a billion year contract, so I’m pretty good at jumping in feet first,” Penny said.

“So are you in?” the man asked.

“I don’t have anything to lose,” Penny said.

"And you know, a Penny saved ..." the man said. 

Penny rolled his eyes but held out his hand for a fist bump. "Is a Penny earned. We are some dorky motherfuckers." 

 

»»»

 

It was strange being in a body again. Penny could feel his heart beating, even the pulse in his fingers, and he could feel the temperature of the air and, man, these boxers were awfully itchy. 

He looked over at the other Penny, who was staring at his hands. It was a strange to be incorporeal at first, but other Penny seemed to be handling it. Penny gave him a quick tutorial about how the shelving system worked. After he started explaining some of the runes, the other Penny rolled his eyes at him. “I got this,” he said. “And we have a billion years to work out the kinks.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Penny said.

“Go see Kady,” the man said. “She’s in Julia’s spare bedroom.”

Penny didn't need to be told twice. He closed his eyes and opened them in Julia’s apartment, in the spare bedroom. It was nice traveling with hands that hadn’t been cut off and reattached. Kady was sitting on a bed, playing a game on her phone.

“Hey,” Penny said. He should have thought about this longer, come up with a really good line.

She looked up and gasped. “Penny, my Penny?” she said.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said and before he finished, he had Kady’s legs wrapped around his waist and Kady’s mouth on his. He kissed her and kissed her and he never wanted to stop. All the shit he’d been through, all the shit she’d been through, it was all worth it.

She pulled back. “I love you,” she said through a sob. “I love you and I was too chickenshit to tell you.”

“I love you, too,” Penny said.

He walked them over to the bed and spent the night showing her how much he had missed her.

  
»»»

 

Penny had a few minutes before he and other Penny were due to switch. Kady was sleeping next to him, and he kissed her on the forehead and walked quietly out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

Julia was at the table in the dining room, pouring over books. He could see now what a shame it was that this Julia hadn’t gone to Brakebills, hadn’t been in the Knowledge House.

“Hey, Julia,” he said.

“40?” she asked.

“I prefer the OG Penny,” he said.

She walked around the table to give him a hug. “I can’t believe it worked,” she said.

“With you and Kady working on that spell, well, I liked the odds.” 

“That’s really great,” she said smiling. She had such a genuine smile, one that lit up her face. He could see why the other Penny had fallen for her. "Kady and I talked, too," she said. "We know we’re deep in some experimental magic and no one can predict what’s going to happen. But the switching spell seemed like the fairest thing for Kady and you and the other Penny.”

“And maybe you,” Penny said. “Listen, I’m biased as hell, but if you want to give other Penny a shot, I think it could be a good thing.”

Julia smiled at him. "He's growing on me." 

"Well, he is a very attractive man," Penny said and Julia gave him a playful shove. "And thank you for being there when Kady needed you." 

"Of course," she said. "That's what friends are for." 

"Yeah," Penny said. "Friends." 

"Now get back to The Library, I've got some stuff I need researched." She grinned at him. 

He leaned over and hugged her again.  "On my way," he said, feeling better about the future than he ever had before. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you guys enjoyed! :)
> 
> I am on [tumblr](https://numinousnumbat.tumblr.com/).


End file.
